On today's Reel Web, Jason Urgo of SocialBlade and David Stroz from Sonic Orb Studios answers some questions about audience retention over the number of actual views you get on YouTube, benefits to using YouTube to recruit applicants for your company's open job positions, general video advice, and more.

A: YouTube is trying to determine how valuable your video is to a viewer's overall viewing session. Some creators are trying to game the system by having a shorter or longer video thinking that audience retention on one versus the other does better for ranking in search, but YouTube says neither is true. It is better to just focus on making your content engaging so that the video contributes to the viewers' overall viewing time on YouTube as a whole, not just on your video in particular.

Q: YouTube recently announced a new update to their YouTube Editor. Tell us a little more about that.

A: The video editor now lets you actually preview your effects live as you're applying them. In real time, you can see what each filter and tweak will look like while the video plays.

A: If your company really wants to recruit high quality people, those people will be a little bit more selective in where they work and in the jobs they take. If you have a video showing what your company is all that portrays your personality well, those job postings get many more applicants from high level people and they also tend to be shared much more around the Internet.

Q: A popular video Q&A website to check out is VYou.com. It's currently being used mostly by people who are on YouTube to ask a question for their audience to answer. With a more robust search system VYou.com just added to their site, how do you think this might affect other Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers?

A: It's still unknown how this could impact other Q&A sites like Yahoo Answer or Formspring.me or if it will have any affect on them at all.

A: The wave of the future is streaming through the internet and a lot more people are cutting the cord so to speak so cable is probably going out. There is a bit of a generational gap, but it's becoming second nature to the younger generation who watches videos on phones all the time.

Q: What is one quick tip about effective use of online video on your website?

A: Allow viewers to full screen the video and don't enable auto play with audio.

QUESTION: What's your experience been like with VYou.com?

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View The Full Video Transcript:

Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another week of the Reel Web, where every week we just talk about some of the online video news from the week before to help you guys out who are creators on YouTube. And this week, I have two guests with me. Your name is?

We have David Stroz here with Sonic Orb Studios and I also do a channel called the Quad Spot.

Awesome. He interviews a lot of YouTubers and stuff. The first thing we want to talk about is something that YouTube just posted on their blog about how audience retention scores are now influencing search much more than they were before. We kind of already had an idea bout that before. Can you just share real quick, why that’s important, audience retention throughout your whole video over the importance of getting actual views?

Sure. Yeah, in general when YouTube is trying to determine if your video is valuable and really to get people to keep watching—to watch advertising and all of those other things, to keep them engaged on the site. They want to make sure that you’re actually enjoying the content that you’re watching there.

What YouTube is talking about in this blog post specifically is that people are trying to gain in the system, by saying: hey, if I make my video shorter, people are more likely to watch the whole thing and thus that will get my videos higher in search. Other people are like no, I want to make longer form content, so when people watch my whole video, it’s actually seen as a much more valuable video. What YouTube is saying is that actually isn’t how it works. Instead how it works is that they just want people, like videos that are contributing to the users overall viewing time. Like how long do you usually spend watching YouTube a day?

YouTube a day? I hardly watch. I’m more of a content creator, but when I watch, especially Jason Urgo’s channel, I normally watch the whole video. And usually it’s the related videos that pop up later.

Ooh, I need some, too.

You know it’s the related videos that really you get caught up. And if there’s something good that has a great thumb, I’ll be more likely to watch it. But as we said, with those misleading custom thumbs that people are doing, if I see it’s not anything like the thumb suggested, I’m going to click off.

Yeah.

Yeah. So basically don’t worry about trying to gain in the system. Whether your video is long or whether it’s short, it’s more important just to make engaging content. And YouTube isn’t looking specifically just at how long they’re getting through your video, as much as they’re looking at how long does this video—how does this influence how the person is watching YouTube overall through their whole viewing session, not just through your video. So making good, engaging content is important.

YouTube also recently announced a new update to their YouTube Editor. You want to tell us a little bit about that?

There’s a really interesting info graphic on your linkup below about how to use YouTube if you’re recruiting people for your company or for your job and why it’s important. What are one of the ways that you think that YouTube is really helpful for help in recruiting people to your company?

Well, I guess if you’re looking for a job, a lot of people might just want to apply to anything in general. But if you’re really wanting to get high quality people, those people might be a little bit more selective. So if you have something sort of showing maybe what you might be doing in your company or what your company is all about, some sort of behind the scenes, in the trenches, that type of a thing, that would you know, get more people. I mean in general, like you’re putting an ad on a website, put a video, and show what you’re selling. It’s the same thing for looking for a quality hire as well.

Cool. And then there’s a lot of other ways as well. Like how else can YouTube help you recruit people for your company?

Well, the personality really shows more through a video, I think than just a piece of text or a block of text on a website. If you can truly show off what you’re doing and show it off to whoever is going to look at this video, it’s fantastic. And I always find that people watch video more than they read a website.

Yeah, there you go, like I want to work there. They even put a video and it’s a cool video. And also the job posting is shared more when there’s video involved as well, so that’s another reason. Great info graphic, if you’re an employer check it out below for all the reasons why you should use video in promoting your job opportunities.

A popular video recording website that maybe a lot of you guys have heard of is called VYou, and it’s being used mostly for people who are on YouTube to ask a question of their audience and they get’s tons of answers back. Kind of like a FormSpring type of thing, but for video. And the thing that just changed that they announced that I think is really cool is now they have a very robust search system involved. So now, if you are looking for an answer to almost any question and maybe you don’t want to go to Google for it—you want to actually see live people talking about it. Now you go to VYou.com instead and you can search for an answer to a question that’s probably been asked before.

So it’s sort of like a combination of Yahoo Answers or Cora, all of those things? That’s a pretty cool thing.

And the cool thing is they’ve had this backlog of questions and answers that have been building, building, building and building and then they launch this very robust search function to the site, and now the site kind of became way more valuable overnight.

So that could be helpful for tutorials. How do I render out of Adobe Premiere? I think this might actually hurt Yahoo Answers.

I don’t know. We’ll see. If you’ve used it though, please comment below and let us know, because I’ve put like a couple of questions I think, but I haven’t really gotten a response. I usually am responding to other people’s questions; I haven’t asked many myself. Check it out. More about that is linked up below.

The Wall Street Journal last week posted an interesting article about an application that you can use to log into Facebook and it’ll take all your social context from your social networks and say this is what all your friends are liking and watching on television, and it kind of turns itself into like a TV guide for you to use for your own content. So you can kind of figure out like hey all my friends are watching this show; they really like it and I probably will too. So it kind makes TV viewing and scheduling a little bit more social than maybe it otherwise was.

So now I can watch what Jason Urgo is watching.

What do you watch?

At the moment, nothing I don’t think.

Besides YouTube?

Besides YouTube.

He watches ReelSEO, that’s all you need to know.

Yeah, of course, you know.

There’s been a couple of articles this past week in the Wall Street Journal and other places, talking about how cable companies might be in trouble. Apparently they’ve reported this past quarter they lost 200,000 subscribers and some people are saying, no that’s just normal. It’s kind of a lull time in the season; it’ll pick up again later. Other people are saying yes, but there are many more households being established and that they aren’t tapping into so they should be growing at a higher rate than they are, not losing. And so some people are saying cable companies are in trouble. Some people are saying they aren’t. What do you think?

The wave of the future is just streaming through the internet. And it’s gotten so well, that I see a lot more people and hear a lot more people cutting the cord now. So I think cable is going out.

You say that as a guy who’s kind of in that world, like I am. Because I cut the cord like 4 years ago. I haven’t had cable or TV for a long time. But you think for the average user that’s going to be true, too, as it becomes easier or more accessible or whatever?

You know, I’m into tech so I follow this, but I also see the people that don’t know much about it. So there’s always going to be that group of people that don’t know enough to just get their content online. Although, as the next generation is sort of learning this, it’s going to become second nature.

There’s going to be a huge paradigm shift, I believe. Especially the younger generation who watches on their phones all the time. Google for example is rolling out their fiber project in Kansas City at the moment and I think that’s going to be something that’s going to immediately change things.

For those of you guys who maybe are video marketers or use a lot of online video on your websites to talk about products or to promote your service or even introduce your company, there’s a great article—link it up below about effective ways to use online video on your website, specifically on how to place it on your website to get the most views, to gain the most conversions and sales and all that. So definitely go check that out. Urgo, you have like one quick tip about effective use of online video on your website?

I would say, I’ve been to a lot of websites of startups and things like that, that have some sort of product video on there, telling me what their product is. I have a large monitor and a lot of times the placement is very small compared to the whole screen. So I’d say the number 1 tip, allow me to full screen that video.

Cool. And David, what about you?

I would say, don’t enable auto play. It’s not about the views. That just get’s annoying. If you’re going to have an auto play, definitely don’t have that with sound active by default. That’s no bueno! I would hate your website if you did that.

We were actually at a YouTube meet up here in Philadelphia. We had a great day hanging out together and just shooting videos, blogs and everything. And I want to encourage you guys if this is your first time here, go check out these guys. They all look beautiful. Everyone say, Hello YouTube.

Hello YouTube!

We’ve been having a great time. If this is your first time hanging out with us, we’d love to have you every week; make sure you subscribe. And on Thursday we’ll have our Creator’s Tip video, where we’re going to tell you guys who are trying to balance home life and school and education and jobs and kids and everything, we’re going to talk with Arturo Traino about how he balances a fulltime job with YouTube and everything. Great stuff coming up, so subscribe if you want that, videos and all of the other stuff we’re doing here for you guys at ReelSEO. And we’ll see you all again next week for another look at the Reel Web. Bye.

See you later YouTube. Peace out.

I know none of us can talk about this, but how to look good and presenting yourself best on camera. We’re going to talk with Arturo instead.